Hip moves don’t come naturally, and when you start playing flag football, the biggest thing to focus on that’s a big change from normal football: don’t flag guard. It is a natural reaction for everyone and takes a little bit of time to get used to not doing it. Once you perfect the art of not stiff arming and swiping at people trying to pull your flag, you can begin to step up your hip game. Here are a couple of tips and moves to start you out.

The Karaoke Step – It is exactly what it sounds like. We have all done the karaoke step in warm ups at some point or another. It is as simple as turning your body to a side and throwing your one of your legs behind the other. The key to a good flag move is changing the position of the flag so the defender doesn’t know where to grab. This turns your body sideways while keeping a good amount of your speed. If applied at the right time, is a basic but dangerous hip move.

The Big Boy hip – This is probably the easiest to preform but the hardest to master. The goal of this move is to eliminate one of your flags by shielding the other between the defender and you. Sound difficult? Well, it’s not. The way to do this is simply throw one of your hips into half the defender. This will pin the flag in between the two of you and force the defender to reach across your body for the other flag. The reason why it is hard to master is because you can’t run a guy over. So you need to practice hitting half of the body or at the defenders hips. It also needs a good amount of force but not too much. People have made careers off of this move if you can learn to perfect it.

The Jab Step – If you weigh over 200lbs you might want to just skip over this one. Anyone can do this but not very many people can make it effective. It is exactly what it sounds like. You plant your outside foot hard and change direction causing the defender to go the wrong way. You really need to be athletically gifted to pull this off and alot of practice will help.

The Asian Dip – This is probably the most difficult to do. This move is where you basically squat or lunge while you are running causing you to change levels. This is a very effective move if pulled off correctly. There are two problems that make it hard to master. First, is keeping your balance. When you change your levels it is hard to stay upright at the speed you are at. To help with this, I typically step at a 45 degree angle before dipping. It helps me keep my balance and get lower than if I was running straight. Second, is not flag guarding. You need to almost lift your arms above your head when you do this. If not, your elbows typically cover your flags and it will be called. You will have a tendency to put your hand on the ground to stay upright. That is also flag guarding so shy away from that. If perfected, this is one of the toughest moves to counter and can be extremely effective.

What’s your favorite go-to hip or dip move? Feel free to tell us about it below in the comments so others can learn your experience!